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Courts and Crime

A North Carolina man, facing multiple counts of using a computer to solicit a minor, waived a preliminary hearing in Bedford County General District Court Monday, moving the charges on to the April grand jury to consider.

Bedford County Sheriff’s investigators have charged another person in connection with a series of five burglaries in Bedford County. The burglaries occurred between December 24, 2012, and January 4, 2013.

Tanisha Ping Linette Nelson, 20, of Roanoke, was arrested early Tuesday morning and is being held on a $25,000 bond in the Bedford Adult Detention Center. Nelson was charged with five counts of grand larceny and two counts of larceny of a firearm.

A local pizza store owner has been charged with four counts of felony embezzlement for allegedly failing to pay taxes, according to Bedford Police Chief Jim Day.
Gianfranco Greco, 38, the owner of Frank’s Place on E. Main Street, is charged with failing to pay taxes on four different occasions, Day said. He said the city treasurer attempted to work with Greco on getting the taxes paid, but when those efforts failed the Commonwealth’s Attorney’s office suggested going ahead with filing the charges.

When the two men and one woman who broke into a Huddleston home in Dec. 2011 returned to that home to pick up the merchandise they planned to take, a surprise was waiting for them — the owners of that home and two neighbors.

One of those neighbors, Dave Vaden, had a gun.
Two of the suspects were detained until authorities could show up; the third took off and was on the loose for more than a month.

A Federal Grand Jury sitting in the United States District Court for the Western District of Virginia in Roanoke has charged 10 individuals with conspiring to possess with the intent to distribute and distribution of a variety of prescription drugs, as well as other charges.

In an indictment returned under seal on January 17, 2013, and unsealed last Wednesday following the defendants’ initial court appearances, the grand jury has charged the following:

Beverly Stanley never expected to get all the items back that were stolen from her home when it was broken into Jan. 4.
But there was one item—worth very little, if anything—that she had to have back: her nine-year-old laptop.
That was not because of its value, but because of what was stored inside, several years worth of family photos. To Stanley, those were priceless.
Some good police work, and a bit of luck, helped her wish come true.

Tony Ware, a former Bedford County District 5 Supervisor, pleaded no contest Tuesday in Bedford County Circuit Court to seven embezzlement charges and seven money laundering charges.
The charges stem from his handling of a fundraiser, his time as treasurer of the Big Island Volunteer Fire Department and his work as power of attorney for a county resident.

The Evington man convicted of robbing, at gunpoint, the Taco Bell in Forest, will spend six years in prison for his crimes.
But it could have been longer.
Elton Mays Short III, 23, was facing a nine-year mandatory sentence until his lawyer, Linda Willis, presented a recent case to Judge James Updike in which the Virginia Supreme Court ruled mandatory gun sentences could run concurrently, rather than consecutively.